Day 1

Well my story does not start with a definitive beginning or an end, the beginning can be linked to a series of side effects from having a stroke. I had sudden significant weight loss, I had double vision, and I started my journey with mental health: first PTSD, then anxiety and depression. At the time when this all started, I did not know that I had a stroke. So, my focus was trying to address a new and sudden set of health circumstances.

I say now to my friends and family that the difference between a normal mental state and a compromised state of mind is a very thin line. One day I was living what I would describe as a normal life and the next day my world started to crumble. The panic attacks that I felt were sudden, suffocating and disorienting. When they struck, I felt overwhelmed with sadness, had labored breathing and thought I was dying. After they passed, I would be disorientated to the point that I would have to remind myself who I was, where I lived, etc. I also had developed, over many years, a poor ability to sleep. What changed was I began to obsess about not sleeping which lead to poorer quality of sleep, between 3-5 hours of restless sleep per night, for almost one year. Suddenly something as simple as sleeping was now a major challenge for me, something I naturally did my entire life.  I also lost 40 lbs. in six weeks (my weight was 218 when the weight loss started) and could not see clearly. My body was trying to talk to me and I was not listening, so the siren in my body just continued to get louder until I could no longer withstand it.

This website will capture my journey through the health problems I faced, mostly focusing on mental health. I will talk about how I learned to cope with it, what it is like, and how I became stronger as a result. I choose the name of the website with tongue and cheek humor in an attempt to humanize the experience and the negative perceptions about mental health. As my therapist said to me, when you break an arm you have it fixed, so when you break a mind you should do the same thing. Yet for me, and for many people, there is a negative perception around mental health. I perceived it as a weakness, versus as something that is in need of repair. What I learned was my mind was in need of repair and could be healed.